https://youtu.be/uMohDN01acQ

Show Notes:

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Welcome back to the simplified integration podcast. Innovators. It's great to have you on for episode number 14 integration is not a one size fits all solution.

Speaker 2: (00:13)
Leonardo da Vinci once said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and I agree. You see the problem with the way that most consulting groups approach medical integration is anything but simple. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's expensive, it's complicated and quite frankly it's exhausting. Enough is enough. There are far too many amazing integrated clinics that are struggling. Well, I'm on a mission to change that. What I've come to find from over five years working with integrative practices is that simplicity really is the secret. The old saying of less is more is true. Through a streamlined approach, I was able to create multiple successful seven figure integrated clinics and now I'm going to show you how you can do the same. Join me as I share with you the secrets to successful medical integration and practice growth. Join me on a journey to greater sophistication through innovation. I'm Dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to the simplified integration podcast.

Speaker 1: (01:11)
Hey doc, great to have you back on. So I'm really excited to launch this five part series. This is part one and this is a topic on the fact that integration is not a one size fits all solution for doctors and for clinics. And this whole topic came about because I sent out a recent survey to the people that follow me and it was a, it was a two-part survey. The first part was for doctors who are not yet integrated but maybe tossed around the idea or curious about it. And my question for those people was, why have you integrated yet? Like what are your concerns? What are your hesitations? Why haven't you jumped into that, uh, to integration? The second part of the survey was for those doctors who are integrated, what are your biggest frustrations with the integrated model now? Um, some of the responses I got back were pretty predictable.

Speaker 1: (01:57)
Some nut, uh, were not what I expected. But for the group who is not yet integrated, almost all the responses were the same. So again, the question was, if you, if you're not integrated yet, why haven't you? And almost every it was like 87%. I think of the people who responded, said, I haven't integrated because of financial concerns. So that would be either, um, I don't have the startup capital to integrate or I'm concerned about how much money it costs to run integration or they're just concerned because of the, just the overall financial risk of running a program like that. And, um, those people are right. And I'll also, those people are wrong and I don't mean that in a bad way, but there's two sides to that story. So, uh, the other, and I'll talk about that in just a minute. The other side of the group, so for doctors who have already integrated, the responses were all across the board.

Speaker 1: (02:46)
So it was frustrations with, uh, not making enough money. Uh, some doctors had gone belly up and got bankrupt from their integrated practice. Some doctors were having a really tough time navigating a third party payer. They are struggling understanding how Medicare reimbursed or private insurance or how to add therapies that added value, financial value to their practice. Some doctors were frustrated with the, um, just the complexity of integration, uh, having to run and manage a huge team of people having to juggle all these different types of therapies in the office. And also one of the big ones was the uncertainty of the future of integration. So I got all kinds of different answers from the folks who have already integrated. So this series is focused on one main theme and this theme is that integration is there. There are different flavors, there is different levels, different paths of integration.

Speaker 1: (03:37)
So there's not a one size cookie cutter fits all solution for your office. So when I ask a doctor, Hey, what do you like w how would you define integration? What does that look like to you? So if I were to ask you doc, like what w w if you picture your office as an integrated office, what does that look like? And here's how most people define it. It's the way that most like the big management groups and practice consulting groups teach integration, which is a big hairy, bloated beast of a system to run where you have lots of staff, you have full time medical staff, you have lots of different in insurance and cash based therapies. You have complex care plans, you're very, very insurance reliant. And you're also, um, while you're also a cash reliant, right? Because these days you can't rely strictly on insurance.

Speaker 1: (04:22)
And so that's what I call typical like integration. And when most doctors think, well, in order to do that, I would need at least a hundred thousand dollars to get started. And then you're looking at an overhead of anywhere from 60 to 110, $120,000 per month. That is what I call conventional integration. That's what most doctors have in their minds eye of what that model looks like. However, a lot of doctors don't realize is there are so many different other iterations of integration and in fact, you can make integration, whatever you want to make it. So I've been, uh, integrated for, uh, shoot seven years now. And I've helped dozens and dozens of practices integrate. And the funny thing is is that every doctor, each actor wants something different from integration. And what we found over the years in our own practices and coaching other doctors is that there's really three paths. There's three main paths when it comes to integration.

Speaker 1: (05:11)
And I'm going to start somebody switch this slide. I hope you can see this on the back. So we have path one, path two and path three. And when we first came up with this concept of paths, I originally came up with idea of levels. So you have level one, integration level two and level three. But we scrapped that idea because what we realized is that level one makes it sound like, well, if you're down here, you're just a beginner in integration and you're not, you should be up here at level three. But that's not true. In fact, a lot of doctors choose path one or the first level of integration because that's really what they want out of their practice. They're not aspiring to have four or five, six, seven, eight different offices. They want one. Um, sort of niche integrated practice that can run right alongside their chiropractic practice.

Speaker 1: (05:52)
I'll break that down in a minute. Then we have path two, which is just a different flavor, so to speak of integration and then, and then a path three. So I've named them streamlined innovator and that's path one. Path two would be a growth coordinator. And path three being a scaling operator, each path is a completely distinct form of doing integration. So let me break down each path for you. And over the course of this next five part series, I'm going to break down path one, path two and path three for you in more depth. Uh, for the sake of this episode, I want to give you just a big overall picture of these different paths of integration, um, so that you can identify, potentially identify with one, but also know that it's not like, alright, here's your integration program. This is how it's done. Here's how he teach it and this is how you need to do it.

Speaker 1: (06:36)
That you don't need to do it that way. So, um, let me, let me break down each of these paths for you. So path one is what we call a streamlined being, a streamlined innovator. So this type of integration is where we typically lead with regenerative medicine. So regenerative medicine is a cash based service. We don't bill it to insurance. It's a, um, it's just a cash pay type service. And this is a program that you can get started for 90% less costs than traditional integration. So remember just a few minutes ago, I said, typically it takes about a hundred thousand dollars on the low end to integrate your practice. That would include legal fees, your business set up, uh, that includes, uh, includes equipment costs, uh, coaching fees, hiring your medical staff, hiring your nurse practitioner, getting a chiropractor on board, buying a bunch of equipment. So it's very, very costly to get a conventional integrated office off the ground.

Speaker 1: (07:24)
However, if you're doing a niche type integration where you're doing regenerative medicine, you can get that practice up and running for less than $10,000. And when I tell chiropractors that I'm like, they're like, Hey, I'd love to integrate. I just don't have the money to do it. Well, I'm like, well, what number did you have in mind? Like, wow, I think I need to at least 60 70 80 K to get started. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It depends on what you want to do. So first let's, let's define why you want to integrate what your goal is and then we'll figure out which path is the right one for you. And a lot of doctors choose this path because it fits their budget, it fits the goal, what they want to get out of their clinic and they don't, but they don't realize it doesn't actually cost a lot of money.

Speaker 1: (08:01)
There are doctors who will charge you a bunch of money to do an integration that's not necessary. You can get an office like this running with less than 10 in less with less than $10,000 you can get it started in under 90 days. So it doesn't have to be this big complicated system that you have to like, you know, overwhelm your office and your staff with an over overwhelm yourself with. So this is a low overhead system. What are the biggest issues with conventional integration? Is this massively high overhead? To give you an idea, when we were conventionally integrated, our overhead was anywhere from a hundred you know, nine 80 90 a hundred we had $110,000 per month overhead. So you've got to see a ton of patients for that and you got to build a ton of insurance for that. That's not what everyone wants out of integration.

Speaker 1: (08:41)
So what we teach in this model at path number one is a low overhead system so you can keep most of what you collect. So it's profitable at the end of the day. And then we teach how to integrate in less than 90 days. So if you're not running this through private insurance and Medicare and third party payers, you can get a system like this running in really two months. You can do it way in much less than 90 days. And this is a system, so you're not going to, with this type of system, some doctors may may collect more, but this is a system that generally brings in about 20 to $40,000 in revenue per month, right? So it's a, it can be a, a mid, a low mid or even high six figure revenue, gender generator for your office. And if you can keep your overhead low, which is what we teach, you should be able to take home a big chunk of that in terms of of uh, pay that you bring home at the end of the day.

Speaker 1: (09:26)
So this is a really streamlined system. A lot of doctors will run this, this path, one integration on a part time basis. So they're running their full time chiropractic job and they're using this type of therapy and integration for certain patients in their clinic. Uh, regenerative medicine is great for people who have knee pain, hip arthritis, lower back and neck arthritis. It's a great thing to add to your chiropractic clinic, gets great results. Um, and one of the things that we do with this system is that it's, you know, I've taught this system over and over and over again. We've got it down to a science. So we're the only group that I know of in our profession that offers a 90 day money back guarantee. And this is big for doctors because one of the biggest hesitations for docs, like yeah, I would love to integrate but I'm, I'm worried about the risk.

Speaker 1: (10:07)
I'm worried about like the, the liability and the overhead, all that stuff. They have all these concerns. Well if we can't get you to what we've just told you on this page, like you don't pay us anything. So it allows you this opportunity to like to taste, get a taste for what integration looks like and regenerative medicine looks like. And if like at the end of 90 days you're like, man, this was not what I thought it was or Dr. Wells, you're full of crap. We just give you your money back. You don't owe us anything. So this is a great way. We're just trying to take as much risk off the table for doctors so they can actually feel comfortable taking a step forward and integrating their practice without having to worry about the money and the finances and the overhead. We've figured all this stuff out for you.

Speaker 1: (10:45)
So if you, if you've ever been on the fence, and this is a totally a plug for my program, but if you're sitting on the fence and you're considering integration like we've taken, we've made it so, so easy, so affordable to get started in a really simplified way. That's why we call it S uh, being a streamlined innovator. We've streamlined the process. So that would be what we call path one with integration. So path number two, this is what we call a growth coordinator. So this is for doctors who want to get a little bit more out of their practice and just running one or two cash based therapies. So with the growth coordinator, what we're attempting to do here is help as many patients as possible. So you're going to see more patients who are going to maximize your potential revenue. And we do that by strategically adding certain insurance based therapies to your practice to run right alongside your cash based therapies.

Speaker 1: (11:32)
And these things work very closely hand in hand. And what were the strategy that we use here is we make, we're making regenerative medicine incredibly affordable for patients by using their insurance. And we have a strategy for that. I'm not going to talk about that in this episode, but this is for doctors who say, yeah, I would really like to build a very strong six figure and potentially a seven figure business. You can do that with this program and you can do it without having to, having to have these like 15, 20, 25 different like crazy types of therapies. Um, and just trying to build the heck out of insurance just for the sake of billing purposes. So there's a way to do an insurance and regenerative medicine in a really streamlined way and that is path number two. So this is a system lawyer.

Speaker 1: (12:15)
You're expected to bring home, uh, bringing in revenue 40 to a hundred thousand dollars plus in revenue. Uh, it's a great system for areas that are competitive. So one of the, one of the, uh, biggest objections I get from people running cash regenerative medicine businesses is that they have a lot of competition, especially if you, if you live in a big city. So if you're in Chicago or Dallas or New York or LA, San Francisco, um, chances are you have a lot of competition with regenerative medicine. So we're using path number two to create a very competitive program that really gets rid of all your competition cause you're making regenerative medicine extremely affordable for patients. So if you want to learn more about path two, I've got a webinar on this, like it's a case study and a training that you can watch that explains in details as path.

Speaker 1: (12:58)
And I'm also going to go over the path number two in more detail in two more podcasts episodes, which I think is number of 16. And this is also, here's like the biggest, I think one of the biggest selling points to path number two is that it should be staff-driven. So because these are medical services that we're providing patients, your, your medical staff should be able to run the program. And this is a system where you don't have to, there's no like high ticket sales. There's no complicated case management. This is truly, truly a staff-driven system. Once you get it set up, once you get your staff trained, they should be able to handle this type of system with no problems. So it doesn't require a ton of input on your end, which gives you more time to do other things. Which brings me into step or path number three, and this is what we call a scaling operator.

Speaker 1: (13:43)
So let's say you're integrated, maybe you're on path one, maybe you're on path two and you've got that down. Then the next question then becomes, all right, what do I do now? So for some doctors, that's all they want, right? They want to have a healthy revenue stream. They want to be able to work hard, but also go home to their family, enjoy time outside of work and be able to save up for a houses, cars, retirement, that kind of thing. But some doctors want to go bigger. Some doctors are really ambitious and they have a lot of tenacity and drive and they want to grow their practice. Maybe that means expanding their existing practice. Uh, some doctors I work with have multiple clinics already, but they want to grow two, three, four, five, six, seven different clinics. There is a way to do that.

Speaker 1: (14:21)
Now when you, when a lot of doctors are first introduced to integration, this is sort of a selling tactic that a lot of different groups use and I don't, I don't like it. Uh, here's what happens. They say, all right here, here's this integration model. You're going to implement this in your clinic. And then within the first couple of years, we're going to go to what's called phase two. And phase two is when we get you out of the business and the practice can run itself. But the problem with that is that these clinics are oftentimes so complicated to run, that it's not realistic for most doctors to ever get to phase two. They sell the dream. But when it comes down to actually doing it, it's very, very, very get very complicated, especially if you don't have the right tools to grow and scale your business.

Speaker 1: (15:04)
So in episode 18 so three episodes from now actually have a guest, his name is Warren Phillips, one of the smartest guys I know in the chiropractic profession and he's a master. He runs several different successful businesses, super successful guy. And he's gonna give us some tips on what you can do to prepare yourself for scaling a business and what that actually looks like and what like what is a realistic expectation for growing and expanding your practice. So this is the guy that's helped a lot of other doctors do it and I'm really excited to have him on the podcast and I know you're going to get a ton of information. We've actually prerecorded that episode so he's got a ton of ton of amazing information to share with you. But this is like the third path. So the third path, when you get to this point, and if you want to scale your business, we can help you with that as well.

Speaker 1: (15:48)
And what that involves is, is really, there's four different steps to it. But the first part is just getting the right mindset, establishing a good team, having good management organization and tactics in place so that you can actually grow your practice without imploding your practice. Like so many times I see doctors, like they add, they add a service to their office, whether it's integration or decompression or functional medicine or weight loss. And because they're adding, like they're adding more stress and more responsibility onto their staff, their office implodes. So rather than growing, it shrinks because you got away from, um, what you were good at and just added a bunch of extra burden and bottlenecks into your practice. So there's a way to scale smartly on there some steps that lead up to that, that we help doctors with. So, so I hope you understand, like when you look back at these three different paths, um, one is not better than the other.

Speaker 1: (16:38)
Some doctors are very, very happy doing path one. Some doctors like I want to do path two and that's all I want to do. I don't want multiple clinics. I don't want to have to run that kind of operation where some doctors, and this has been me, uh, we were really happy running multiple locations. Um, I can tell you it's a lot of work and there's a lot that goes into it, but that's what some doctors aspire to do. And so all three of these different paths have their place in integration. So if you're listening to this and you're like, Hey, you know what, I would love to do just path one, we have a plan for you. Or you're saying, Hey, I would love to do path two. I'm not integrated yet, but path two is exactly, I want a good healthy mix of insurance and cash based services and I want to grow my practice.

Speaker 1: (17:16)
Like that's the perfect path for you. So, um, I hope this makes sense to you. I hope you can understand too, again, the main theme is that integration is not the same. It's not a one size fits all solution. Um, although some practice groups teach it that way, it is not in reality that way. And I talked to so many doctors, so many doctors, every week they're like, man, I wish I had done a simpler version of integration. I wish I'd done simplified integration. I bought this huge program. I've got this big thick binder and I really don't know how to run my integrated program effectively. So if that's you, we have a plan for you and I really encourage you to listen to the next episodes in the series of five on a path one, path two and path three and scaling your practice. So a doc, I hope you found this helpful and beneficial. I really appreciate you being out here today and look forward to seeing you on the next episode number 15 where we'll discuss more about path number one, have a great day. Take care, and God bless. Bye bye.

Speaker 2: (18:10)
Hey, innovators. Thanks for listening to the simplified integration podcast. Fact that you're listening tells me that you're like me, someone who loves simplicity, and the truth is those who embrace simplicity are some of the greatest innovators. So hope you got a ton of value from what we covered on today's episode. Be sure to subscribe and share with other docs that you feel could benefit from greater sophistication through simplification and innovation. If you've got specific questions that you'd like answered on this podcast or you've got specific topics that you'd like me to discuss, just shoot me an email at info@simplifiedintegration.com

Speaker 1: (18:46)
that's info@simplifiedintegration.com.